NBC Announces Premiere Date for ‘Hairspray Live!’

NBC has announced that its next live musical will be the Tony-winning Hairspray! And while no casting news has been announced just yet, we do know when the live musical will premiere on our screens.

The network has confirmed that Hairspray Live! will premiere on Wednesday Dec. 7 at 8:00 PM. From the official press release:

“In keeping with our desire to bring the best of Broadway to our live musicals, we’ve assembled the Broadway dream team of Tony Award winners for Hairspray Live,” said NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt. “We’re thrilled to have director Kenny Leon, who knocked The Wiz Live way out of the park, and Jerry Mitchell, the original choreographer of Hairspray and who is the director of two smash hit musicals running on Broadway right now.”

Credit: New Line Cinema

The statement continues:

“We also have one of the most celebrated Broadway hyphenates, Harvey Fierstein, back writing the adaptation for TV. No one knows Hairspray better than him since he played the role of Edna Turnblad more than a thousand times and won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. Along with our incredible producing team of Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, and arguably the best songwriting team in musicals, Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Hairspray Live is in the best possible hands.”

This is great news for NBC, since they’re doing a musical that’s more recognizable to the general public than Peter Pan or The Wiz were. I feel like Hairspray could reach a wider audience than any musical they’ve done since The Sound of Music. And yet, I still feel like they’re missing the boat by not doing The Music Man with either Seth MacFarlane or Neil Patrick Harris. But that’s mostly just wishful thinking at this point. Honestly, I’d love to see NBC dig deep and do something like Bye Bye Birdie, West Side Story or South Pacific. I mean, if you’re going to do American theater, DO American theater, you know? Anyway, I’ll be watching whatever NBC puts out this year, either way. So I can’t really complain. I’m just a sucker for this sort of thing.

But what do you think about NBC’s decision to have Hairspray be its next musical? Should it have been something else? Maybe The Music Man? Wicked? Hamilton? Sound off in the comments!